Skip to main content
ARS Home » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #89765
Title: THE ROOT ZONE WATER QUALITY MODEL: A COMPUTER MODEL FOR MORE REALISTIC PREDICTION OF LAND AND WATER POLLUTION BY PESTICIDES AND OTHER AGRICULTURALCHEMICALS.

Author
item Wauchope, Robert - Don
item Rojas, Kenneth
item Ahuja, Lajpat
item WILLIS, GUYE - RETIRED - BATON ROUGE, LA
item Moorman, Thomas
item MA, QING-LI - UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA

Submitted to: International Congress of Pesticide Chemistry Abstracts
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 8/7/1998
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Computer simulation models are the only way to analyze and integrate the numerous complex and interdependent processes that control the fate and behavior of agricultural pollutants - pesticides and fertilizers- in the environment. The Root Zone Water Quality Model is a new simulation program which provides detailed descriptions of such processes in a modular system which tracks crop, soil, management, and environmental processes in sub-daily time steps. The model consists of detailed theoretically-based modules for infiltration, runoff and evapotranspiration; water and chemical transport within the soil root zone; crop growth, crop and chemical management, nutrient (C and N) dynamics; soil inorganic equilibria, soil aerobic and anaerobic microbial processes, and pesticide movement and fate. In the pesticide module, the agricultural environment is divided into four compartments: plant foliage, plant residue, soil surface, and soil subsurface. Chemical transformations within each compartment, chemical transport between compartments, and chemical losses from the system are tracked as a function of the properties of the chemicals and the hydrology, meteorology, crop growth, and cultural practice effects in each compartment. The large data requirements of the model are compensated for by provision of complete data sets for scenarios describing standard crop situations, and by a built-in database of soil and chemical properties. I/O uses the full GUI capabilities of Windows 95. The model has the potential to provide, for standard scenarios, a more accurate and detailed prediction of pesticide dynamics in soil, terrestrial and acquatic environments.